


if there was a reason, it was you

by justbreathe80



Category: due South
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-15
Updated: 2009-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:03:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbreathe80/pseuds/justbreathe80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't hear the car pull up, and so he started when he heard a smooth, familiar, female voice say, "Constable, care for a ride?" Stella Kowalski. Smiling, barely, at him, leaning out of the window of clearly expensive car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if there was a reason, it was you

**Author's Note:**

> for sageness in the 2007 ds seekrit santa exchange
> 
> Thank you a million times to minervacat for the handholding and the beta, and to cold_poet. I wouldn't have gotten through this without you telling me I didn't suck.

**discovery**

The case had been rough - long days and nights for over a week, too little sleep, and by the time they arrested Barry Tolson, just moments before he was about to claim his seventh young victim, Ray looked like he was mere moments away from coming apart completely, unraveling at the seams. Fraser didn't know what to do when Welsh unceremoniously kicked them out of the station after Tolson was booked and brought to holding. Fraser thought he should say something, _do_ something, but as he reached out, Ray shrugged away and said, "I'm going to the bar. See ya, Frase."

Fraser thought about protesting, perhaps, but decided it was wise to instead say goodnight and set out on foot toward the Consulate. The cool autumn wind swept against his cheeks as he walked. It was his favorite weather in Chicago, and he wished that he was less exhausted so that he could enjoy it.

He didn't hear the car pull up, and so he started when he heard a smooth, familiar, female voice say, "Constable, care for a ride?" Stella Kowalski. Smiling, barely, at him, leaning out of the window of clearly expensive car.

There were few people with whom he wanted to spend twenty blocks in the car less than her, but he didn't have the heart to argue, he was just too exhausted, so he steeled himself and got in.

"Yes, thank you kindly," he said. He didn't realize until halfway through the silent drive that they weren't going the way to the Consulate, but rather heading north along Lake Michigan.

Stella took him home, to her home, kicking off her black leather high heels in the foyer of the too-new, too-sterile twenty-seventh floor apartment, and pushed him gently, small hands against his back, into the bedroom. He protested, but she stayed quiet, toppling him over onto his back and working off his boots. Then, she left the room, shutting the door behind her. Fraser stared up at the ceiling, blinking, and the next thing he knew, there was sunlight streaming in the large windows, through the white gauze curtains.

When Fraser walked carefully, on the tips of his toes, out of the bedroom, Stella's blond hair was visible over the white leather armrest of the couch, where her head was resting. She looked peaceful - and years younger - when she was asleep, and he felt strangely affectionate and grateful to her for giving him something he hadn't even known he'd needed. He reached over and smoothed her hair back from her head before letting himself, quietly, out of the front door.

**conundrum**

Ray was behaving strangely; he had been all that day, somewhat distracted, and Fraser couldn't stop his mind from wandering to a place that he desperately did not want to go. Ray had gone on a date with a woman named Susanne, who he met dancing, the night before, after leaving the station with a big, wide smile on his face, and _whistling_. Fraser had gone home - back to the Consulate, which was home in a marginal sense anyway - and tried not to think about what Ray was doing, who he was with. He told himself that Ray deserved to go out with a nice woman and have a good time. Even if he didn't really want to believe it.

Fraser watched as Ray grappled with the computer, fingers coming down entirely too hard on the keys, like he was punishing them for something. Fraser finally took a deep breath and asked, "How was your date, Ray?"

"What?" Ray said distractedly, turning his head toward Fraser. "My - oh, my date. Yeah, it was - it was good. Susanne is really great, we had fun."

Fraser swallowed hard. "Oh, well, that's wonderful. I guess that you two will be seeing each other again soon?" He waited patiently and tried to ignore the sting in his throat at the anticipated response.

"No," Ray said, turning his head back to the screen, squinting. "I don't think so, Frase."

**prelude**

He hadn't even seen it coming. He supposed, in retrospect, it should have been clear to him that they were headed in a particular direction, but it wasn't until the fourth time he'd spent the night in her bed (she'd taken to driving his walking route and picking him up after work, and then they'd taken to sharing meals on those nights) that he woke to the feeling of slightly chilled feet against his calves and the sweep on soft hair across his cheek.

"Stella," Fraser said, trying to imbue his voice with protest, but instead, it came out almost pleading, and he understood how it could be misinterpreted. Stella pressed her small, thin body along the length of his own, and he felt himself becoming aroused. He told himself that it was just proximity, and how long it had been since he'd been this close to another living and breathing person.

"Shut up, Fraser," Stella whispered, nothing hard in her voice though, moving her body impossibly closer, and Fraser found his fingertips drawn to the soft skin of her hip, "just - okay?" And then she kissed him, and he let himself fall into it, wholly and completely and unexpectedly, lost in the soft press of her lips and her body warm against his own.

When he finally located his hands and pushed them gently against her hips to separate them, they were both breathing hard. "I don't understand," he said. "Why -"

"Why not?" she replied, pulling one of his hands up to cup her breast through her thin blue t-shirt. Fraser could think of a hundred reasons why - a thousand even - and yet no reason at all, so he leaned forward and caught her lips again with his own, feeling her smile against his lips and her fingertips tugging at the hem of his henley.

**justification**

Fraser wasn't stupid, and he wasn't naive, no matter how people sometimes saw him. He knew that what they were doing was stupid to the extreme, and yet, every night that wasn't spent sitting painfully close to Ray on his couch watching hockey or baseball or something else, eating take out, was spent naked and lush in Stella's bed, between the 800 thread count sheets.

He felt guilty, certainly, and he knew very well, despite his lack of normal social experiences growing up, that it wasn't socially acceptable to sleep with your best friend's ex-wife.

Fraser knew, though, that after the years that had passed, Ray no longer desperately wished that Stella would take him back they way he had once seemed to. Perhaps it was just the passage of time, but Fraser rather liked to think it was everything Ray had experienced in that time. They'd spent three months together out on the ice - three months that were hard and crazy and wonderful and both the best and worst of Fraser's life. They spent two months in Inuvik before Fraser decided to come back to Chicago with Ray. Five months where Ray changed immeasurably, and Fraser waited for something to happen that never did.

So he spent four or five nights a week with Ray, just like they'd always done, like best friends, then going back to the Consulate to sleep. He spent the other nights at Stella's apartment, sometimes with Diefenbaker back at the Consulate, sometimes with him along, sleeping next to the bed, while Fraser learned the planes and contours of a woman who made absolutely no sense and said nothing at all.

**verbosity**

"Did you always want to be a Mountie?" Stella asked one night, sweaty and slick and flushed, as Fraser slid out of her and dropped onto his back.

"Excuse me?" he said dumbly, completely taken aback by the direction of the question and the non sequitur, and perhaps somewhat dull from the orgasm. It wasn't that these times they spent together were silent or fraught in any way, but they rarely conversed about overly personal things. They talked about work quite a bit when they had dinner, cases that Fraser and Ray had worked on and were now on Stella's desk, but most of the time was spent doing rather than talking.

Stella laughed and pushed her damp hair out of her face. "It's not a complicated question, Fraser. Did you always want to be a Mountie?"

Fraser paused. He honestly couldn't remember anyone asking him that question before, and it seemed an odd moment for it, after what they spent the last hour engaged in. "Well, I - I guess so. I mean, I always knew I would be."

"Did you want to be?" she pushed, directing her intense, blue stare at him. In that moment, she reminded him very much of Ray.

"I thought that I would be a professional hockey player when I was thirteen," he answered, smiling slowly at the memory, "but after that, I think I didn't know what else to be. It's who I am."

Stella nodded seriously, then threw one leg over Fraser's hips and straddled him. He brought his hands up to her hips without thinking, her skin beginning to feel familiar under his fingers, and moved slowly against her, even though he was fresh out of erections for that night. "Did you - " he started, his voice coming out so unbearably high, like he was twelve years old, that he cleared his throat and started again. "Did you always want to be a lawyer?"

She moved down his body, kissing down his chest until she was face to face with his cock, still slick from her. "Hell, no," she said, before taking him into her mouth, sucking lightly and making him quickly reconsider the idea that he couldn't go another round.

**historiography**

They never talked about the people they had in common, how their lives had intersected. They never talked about Ray Vecchio, who was still in Florida managing the bowling alley they'd once owned together, or Ray Kowalski, who was still Fraser's partner and still in Chicago and who Stella still saw every time she came by the station. Sometimes, though, Fraser thought that their histories with these two men - how Stella had gotten them both, and Fraser had gotten neither (at least not in the ways he'd once hoped) - were the only thing that made _them_ make one damn bit of sense.

It was there, though, all of it, in the ring on a silver chain that Stella wore around her neck, tucked into her blouses every day, from which marriage Fraser never discovered. In the way that Stella smiled to herself when she walked away from Ray in the station, to how she never once asked Fraser about his relationships or lack thereof with either of them. Not once. Maybe she didn't care, or maybe she cared too much. Maybe it was easier, for both of them, not to know everything, because Fraser had learned the hard way about hanging on to things that were past.

**inquisition**

"What'd you do last night, Frase?" Ray said as he ate a roast beef sandwich with one hand and perused mug shots with the other. The look on his face wasn't accusatory, simply curious. The night before, Ray had hinted at wanting to do something as they were leaving work, but Fraser wasn't sure he could stand another maddening night of sitting next to Ray on his couch, legs touching, shoulders bumping, like that was all he wanted. So _he'd_ hinted at having some things to do and wanting to walk back, so Ray shrugged and took off in the GTO. Instead of making his way fifteen blocks southeast, he headed twenty-three blocks northwest.

He hadn't been able to stop thinking about misleading Ray, about choosing _this_ instead, for the whole night, even with Stella's hand wrapped around him and her wry laugh in his ear.

"I had some Thai food, took Dief for a walk, and went to sleep. It was far from thrilling," Fraser answered, and Dief gave him an exacting look from underneath the desk, like he knew exactly what Fraser was up to, and he didn't approve. Despite Diefenbaker's admonition, he wasn't lying. He'd walked with Dief to Stella's apartment, she had ordered Thai food, and then they went to sleep.

"Sounds like a blast," Ray said amiably, grinning and grabbing his coffee off the desk, and Fraser leaned over to get the Smarties out of the top desk drawer.

**bravado**

It was three weeks after they caught him that Fraser and Ray were called to testify in the Tolson case. Ray had been on edge all day, snapping at anyone who came within three feet of him. When Detective Dewey got a little too close right after lunch, Fraser had to step forward and grab Ray's fist out of the air, just before it hit Dewey's face. "Ray," Fraser said calmly, feeling Ray's barely contained rage coursing through his body, through his hand against Fraser's. Fraser turned his head and gave Dewey a very pointed look, and he quickly, and smartly, left.

"Shit, Frase," Ray whispered, pulling his hand away, on the verge of full trembling. "Fuck."

In the courtroom was barely better, as they sat and watched Tolson's self-satisfied smirk, like he couldn't care less that he had raped and murdered six teenage girls. Ray was vibrating, and Fraser had to resist putting his hand on Ray's leg, to steady him.

Fraser didn't make eye contact with Stella until Tolson took the stand, which Fraser thought was most likely a grave mistake on the part of the defense, but then again, the evidence was damning regardless. As she walked up toward the stand, her heels clicking on the floor, her skirt and jacket perfectly pressed, she glanced over at where they were sitting. Ray smiled weakly but Fraser kept his face blank until she looked away.

Then, they watched as Stella broke Tolson, slowly, almost gently, but ruthlessly nonetheless, into a million tiny pieces on the stand, until he was so caught up in everything that he nearly outright admitted what he'd done in front of the jury and everyone else. When she finally stopped, Tolson looked genuinely confused, like he wasn't precisely sure what had just happened, and there was no doubt left in anyone's mind that Tolson would be facing the death penalty. Ray had finally stopped shaking.

When Stella turned back, facing the rest of the room once more, Fraser thought that she had never been more beautiful than she was in that moment, and he had never understood more why they had all fallen into orbit around her, like she was the sun.

**disclosure**

For a while, it was as if the others weren't there at all. Fraser thought about Ray when he was with Stella - there was no way he couldn't. She reminded him of Ray in so many ways, from the way she drove her car, sleek and fast along dark Chicago streets, to the way she couldn't function before at least two cups of coffee in the morning. But they didn't talk about them, until they did.

One night, late, they were lying face to face in bed, Stella's hands around his neck, his arms wrapped around her and clasped behind her back. Suddenly, she started laughing.

"What is it?" he said gently, tugging her closer.

"Nothing," she said, still smiling, "I was just thinking about how Ray and I used to do this - stay in bed and talk like this."

"Ah," he said, realizing that it wasn't saying much, but it felt like a betrayal, to mention Ray here, like this, when they both knew what it would do to him. At the same time, though, it felt like some very badly needed truth, and after that, Stella started saying more, bringing Ray up, telling stories, mentioning him at different moments, painting a picture of two people who, for a while, knew each other better than anyone in the world. Things like, "Ray always hated having to leave me to go to work when he had an early shift," or "I once showed up at a business dinner for my father on the back of Ray's motorcycle," or "It was hard for me too, when I left him."

Fraser had almost forgotten that Ray and Stella had been together since before they really understood fully what that meant, that they had an entire history that had nothing to do with Fraser whatsoever. He felt like he was learning Ray all over again, from a completely different angle, and he couldn't be sure, but he thought that Stella was trying to tell him something.

**revelation**

Two a.m., and they'd been there for more than five hours - watching the building intently, waiting for Martinez's scheduled drop, but the hours passed and nothing happened, and Fraser feared that Ray was mere moments from, well, freaking out.

"This fucking _sucks_," Ray said, groaning, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and his foot against the floor in a confusing, syncopated rhythm that Fraser couldn't quite follow. "I'm think I'm actually going to lose it this time."

"Just another hour or so, Ray," Fraser said, trying to reassure, soothe, but in truth, stakeouts were the worst aspect of police work, and Fraser was eager to be anywhere but there as well.

"Fuck that," Ray growled, and Fraser reached out and put his hand on Ray's arm. Ray's skin was warm, and he was still - almost unnaturally so - under Fraser's hand. It was like Fraser had lost all common sense, all ability to not do something unaccountably stupid, and he watched, like it wasn't even him doing it, as he moved his hand down Ray's arm to cover Ray's own hand, wrapped around the steering wheel.

Ray turned his head, his gaze intense. "Fraser," he said softly, but Fraser couldn't make himself stop, couldn't move his hand at all. "Fraser."

"Ray, I - " Fraser started, but the words died in his mouth because he had no idea how to wrap up everything he had to say and deliver it, all in that one moment. He could talk for hours, tell Ray how he'd been in love with him, almost since that first day, reeling from a loss so big he couldn't get his head around it, how he'd hoped, so much, that their adventure would be the venue they needed, that Fraser needed, and how he'd been sleeping with Ray's ex-wife because he was lonely, and she let him see Ray in a way that hurt sometimes, it was so welcome.

Instead, he leaned across the seat, to hell with Martinez and the stakeout and everything, and kissed Ray, hard and desperate, pouring three and a half years into it, and thought he might melt right into the leather seat when Ray made a sound into Fraser's mouth, opened his own, and held on, tightly.

**comparative**

One night, Stella asked him if he'd been with anyone recently. It was a typical conversation that one had with someone when starting a new relationship, but what they were doing was so far from a relationship that he hadn't expected it to come up.

"I - it's been a while," Fraser answered. He couldn't talk about Ray Vecchio for any number of reasons, the first being that he was Stella's (other) ex-husband, and the last being that nothing had ever happened. His relationship history was filled with a really overly tragic amount of unrequited love, and a large helping of inertia. But he surprised even himself when the next words out of his mouth were, "Her name was Victoria."

He didn't think about Victoria all that much - just occasional flashes when he saw someone petite, with dark curly hair, walking down the street. He didn't pine after her, and he was grateful on a daily basis that Ray Vecchio had shot him and kept him from making a horrible mistake. He hadn't been with another woman until Stella. There was something about them both that appealed to him, an underlying strength and self-sufficiency that he found incredibly attractive in women. But that was where the similarities ended, because while Victoria had been nothing but betrayal from start to finish - a trail of lies following her every where she went - Stella was brutally honest. Remarkably straightforward and able to keep her head above water no matter what. It made their not-quite-relationship blissfully uncomplicated.

Whereas Ray - Ray wore everything on the outside. He was honest and straightforward and _real_, but when he did something, he poured every drop of himself into it and didn't care what the consequences might be, and Fraser admired that. Wanted to have one ounce of that himself.

**conciliation**

It was still all so new, even though he'd woken up next to Ray on any number of mornings prior, it wasn't the same when he was waking up smiling, naked in Ray's bed like this. Ray had mumbled and swatted half-heartedly as Fraser pulled him close, running his fingertips up the length of Ray's spine, memorizing it, until Ray was pushing closer and doing something that sounded remarkably like purring. "Fraser," Ray croaked finally, burying his face in Fraser's neck. "Coffee?" Fraser pulled away, sighing heavily, and heaved himself reluctantly from the bed to start the day.

They had plans to go to dinner at a restaurant in Greektown that evening, one of Fraser's favorites, and then maybe take in a movie, after spending the day companionably, with Ray watching television and yelling at the Cubs, and Fraser reading the newspaper and sometimes joining in.

Dinner was excellent - he loved Greek food, it was one of the things he missed most about Chicago when they were gone - and they dug into plate after plate of spanikopita and dolmas and souvlaki and tabouli until he thought he would burst. Ray's foot was curled around Fraser's calf under the table, and Fraser still couldn't believe that they were here, that they were doing _this_ \- this thing that he'd wanted and finally just reached out and grabbed after all this time. Ray smiled at him and took another sip of his beer.

When they had finally finished, walking out of Santorini and onto the crowded Saturday night street, Fraser ran face first into someone, and when he pulled back, he was eye to eye with Stella. He hadn't seen her in weeks. She'd stopped trying to see him.

"Hey, Fraser," Stella said, a slight smile on her face. "Ray. How are you?"

"Hey, Stel, long time no see," Ray said, slinging an arm around Fraser's shoulders. "You should come by the station more often, I miss you."

"Yes," Fraser agreed, and it was true - he'd missed her as well.

"Okay," she said, looking back and forth between them, something like recognition dawning on her face, and her smile grew wider. "Listen, I'm meeting someone - you guys have a great night. I'll come by the station soon."

And with that, she was gone, walking down the street, not turning back, and Fraser turned his head and walked with Ray, the weight of Ray's arm on his shoulders comfortable, and exactly what he needed, as they made their way back to the car.

**consummate**

"Oh, god - fuck, I - " Stella said, turning her head to the side, her eyes shut tightly, exposing the long line of her neck. He leaned over and licked, tasting her sweat, biting down a little too hard on her earlobe. He had one hand up above her head, gripping the hard, cool iron of the headboard. His other hand was pressing firmly down on her belly, holding her there, as he moved inside her hard and fast and not careful at all. She felt amazing beneath him like this, slick and hot and open. He'd never been much for unnecessary words during sex, but he wanted to say things to her now. Tell her how beautiful she was, how good it was to be inside her, how unbelievably incendiary it was when she hooked her legs around his waist and pulled him in, just like that.

"Good," he said softly, instead, his voice cracking as kept his mouth close to her ear, pushed inside her harder, a little faster, enough to make her breath catch. It was all he could manage.

Her arms came up, her hands moving up and down his back, her nails sharp against his skin, sliding against the sweat. "God, yes," she said, holding on, letting him fuck her, wanting it.

He could feel himself moving in her, the skin on her stomach soft and firm, her heart beating fast, her breath quick against his face. He wanted to give this to her; he wanted to take it; he wanted everything, right then. She was getting tighter around him, close, and he slid the hand on her stomach down, pushing two fingers against her clitoris.

"Fraser," she gasped, bucking up, and he worked her, slow and hard and right, until she came, choked up and almost sobbing underneath him and still wrapped around him completely, still open. He slid inside her, over and over, until he let go, until he came.


End file.
